Games Workshop dropped the latest Age of Sigmar Battlescroll yesterday, so as always, I’ve spent too much time staring at spreadsheets.
Instead of going through every change, I wanted to try something different. I’ve got thousands of games sitting in the Woehammer database, along with player WoElo, lists and unit usage.
It’s all a load of horse…
Freeguild Cavaliers have gone from 150 to 180 points. This hasn’t surprised anyone who’s played against Cities recently.
Cavaliers were in 91% of Cities lists in our data. But how popular something is doesn’t always mean something is good. Maybe everyone likes horses.
Unfortunately for the horses, there’s more. Lists that had Cavaliers had a win rate of 56.9%. With WoElo, we can get an idea of how often those players should have won based on their WoElo and the players they faced, 51.7%.
They beat that number by another 5.2 percentage points over 756 games.
So it was heavily used, winning a lot and pulling up the win rates of players using them. Another 30 points is understandable
Skimming the Surface
The Fateskimmer was only in 20% of the Disciples lists, but the results were crazy. Lists with it won 69.5% of their games. Good players were using it, and WoElo expected them to win about 56% of the time. They beat that expectation by 10 percentage points.
So GW put the Fateskimmer up 10 points. Cavaliers were everywhere and overperforming, while the Fateskimmer weren’t everywhere, but the lists with it in were massively overperforming.
Then there’s Monsta-Killaz
These are more interesting, they appeared in 72% of Kruleboyz lists. Their win rate was only 52% and their WoElo adjusted rate was the same.
No obvious power issue like the Cavaliers or the Fateskimmer. But with nearly three-quarters of Kruleboyz players taking them, perhaps the issue isn’t power?
Metric
Gutrippaz
Monsta-Killaz
Kruleboyz Lists
65/87
66/87
Inclusion
74.7%
75.9%
Games
318
319
Observed Rate
51.3%
51.9%
WoElo Expected
49.6%
51.5%
vs Expected
+1.6pp
+0.4pp
4+ conversion
18.5%
18.2%
Avg Starting WoElo
409.6
430.2
Whatever the reason, GW decided to put them up 20 points.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the Battlescroll changes, who do you think the big winners and losers are?
We’ve updated the method of calculating the Elo ratings into our Age of Sigmar stats, this includes an attempt to reflect both the tournament strength and the faction strength.
All of the results in this article are taken from Best Coast Pairings, , Ecksen, ChampionshipHub, Milarki, Mini Headquarters, Tabletop Herald and Longshanks. They include GT (Two day events) or GT+ (6 or more rounds) only.
For patrons, you’ll be able to download and play with the database as well (which includes all the lists and stats for all the factions).
As always, if you’re struggling to read a chart, you should be able to right click and then either view or download the image.
I’ve added in a colour code to show the rough age of the rules the faction is using.
As always, these are global stats from various sources around the internet.
Estimated Win Rates if the Player Skill Levels were Equal
What I’m trying to do here is work out what the win rates would be if the skill levels of all the players were the same (Yes, I realise this is nearly impossible to calculate – But I’m playing around here).
How it works is by calculating the average Elo of all the players that have had matches since the July battlescroll dropped. This worked out as 434.6. I then calculated how much difference there was between a factions average Elo shown in our original win rate graph to this overall average. The difference between these two figures was then turned into a percentage difference over/under the 434.6 elo. I then increased or decreased their win rate by this percentage (But this isn’t as simple as deducting or adding the percentage different to the win rate – you have to work out for instance what 4% may be of say 53% and then apply that. For Example – 10% of 40% is 4%)
Win Rates by Release Date
This chart shows the win rates for all the battletomes released within certain periods of time (every 6 months since 4th edition release).
This should show whether Battletomes are generally stronger the later they are released into the edition. As we can see they all fall within the 45-55% win area, though the battletomes released in the last 6 months are a little stronger than the other cohorts.
Battle Formation Win Rates
This chart shows the win rates for Battle Formations that have seen 100 games or more at GT events.
Faction Popularity (Broken Down by Player Elo Rating)
This is perhaps the most interesting chart to me personally. Here you can see the spread of the player skill levels for each faction according to our Elo rating system (updated each week in line with the Age of Sigmar stats).
The dark blue shows the really elite players of 700+ Elo. Interestingly, they don’t seem to give a damn about which faction is performing well in the meta and rely on their own skill (as they should!). Neither to 600-699 rated players. Where we start to see the swell in players possibly chasing the factions with more favourable rules is in players rated less than 600 Elo.
To make it a bit easier to see the effect of higher skilled players, I’ve added the below chart this week which breaks down each factions player base as a percentage.
Elite and Rookie Players by Faction
The blue section shows the percentage of a factions players which have an Elo rating of 500 or greater. While the Orange shows the number of new players to the faction where they have yet to attend a tournament (based on our database history).
The Fabien Chart
Fabien Barbusse is a top player in the AoS scene and a member of the Woehammer Discord who is one of many who points out any mistakes in the charts before we publish them. He stated he felt the most valuable chart would be a version of the one above, which shows the % of 4+ win results in a 5 game event compared to the other results.
% of Players with a Positive GT Result
Ideally you would want 50% of the players having a positive results for a truly balanced game system.
Consecutive Wins
This chart shows firstly the % of players with a negative result from 5 games at GT’s or GT+ in purple for each faction.
Dark blue shows the percentage of players who achieved 5 wins from 5 in the first five rounds of a GT or GT+.
Orange shows the players who achieved four wins from the first four rounds of a GT or GT+ but were unable to achieve the full house and lost their round 5 match.
Green shows the players who achieved three wins from three wins but were unable to win in their fourth round match.
Light blue shows all other players aside from those shown in the first three categories, who were able to achieve a positive result at a GT or GT+ i.e. 3 or more wins.
Battleplan Win Rates
This one could be useful for TO’s who are looking to run tournaments in the near future. If you’re hoping to curtail a few of the higher powered factions, you could perhaps look to use battleplans where those factions aren’t as dominant.
PlasticCraic mentioned the popularity of Battleplans earlier this week on his discord. So thought I’d include this.
Past Battlescroll Win Rates
Woehammer Database
To download out Age of Sigmar stats database, click on the button below.
For those of you who are counted among our legendary Patreons, you can view the full stats and download the stats database.
This database is included in an additional article which is Patreon only and posted on the same day. These Patreon posts also include additional stats which aren’t available in the standard stats article, such as Faction v Faction stats.
This is the top three Old world lists for the Gathering Storm 3 that took place in the US between the 5th and 6th of September 2026. It saw 532players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before we jump into the Top Three Old World Lists, I want to invite everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.
The Top Three Old World Lists
=== Orc & Goblin Tribes [2000 pts] Warhammer: The Old World, Orc & Goblin Tribes, Open War
++ Characters [999 pts] ++
Black Orc Warboss [369 pts] – Hand weapon – Great weapon – Full plate armour – General – Wyvern – Trollhide Trousers – Periapt of Soul Exchange – Charmed Shield – Healing Potion
Night Goblin Bigboss [55 pts] – Hand weapon – Battle Standard Bearer – On foot
Night Goblin Bigboss [30 pts] – Hand weapon – On foot
Night Goblin Oddgit [85 pts] – Hand weapon – Wizard [Level 1 Wizard] – On foot – Tome of Spellcraft – Illusion
Orc Bigboss [81 pts] – Hand weapon – Cavalry spear – Heavy armour – War Boar – Charmed Shield
Orc Bigboss [81 pts] – Hand weapon – Cavalry spear – Heavy armour – War Boar – Charmed Shield
Orc Bigboss [81 pts] – Hand weapon – Cavalry spear – Heavy armour – War Boar – Charmed Shield
Orc Warboss [217 pts] – Hand weapon – Great weapon – Light armour – Shield – War Boar – Icon of Fortitude – Daemon-Blooded Steed – Scale of False Promise
++ Core Units [531 pts] ++
5 Black Orc Mob [65 pts] – Hand weapons – Full plate armour – 5x Shields
25 Night Goblin Mob [147 pts] – Hand weapons – Shields – Boss (champion) – Standard bearer [Banner of Swirling Wind] – Musician – 1x Fanatics [Fanatic ball & chain]
25 Night Goblin Mob [112 pts] – Hand weapons – Shields – Boss (champion) – Musician – 1x Fanatics [Fanatic ball & chain]
25 Night Goblin Mob [112 pts] – Hand weapons – Shields – Boss (champion) – Musician – 1x Fanatics [Fanatic ball & chain]
15 Orc Mob [95 pts] – Hand weapons – Light armour – Shields – Standard bearer
=== Warriors of Chaos [1999 pts] Warhammer: The Old World, Warriors of Chaos, Open War
++ Characters [947 pts] ++
Chaos Lord [501 pts] – Great weapon – Full plate armour – Shield – Mark of Chaos [Mark of Tzeentch] -General – Chaos Dragon – Favour of the Gods
Exalted Champion [266 pts] – Lance – Heavy armour – Shield – Mark of Chaos [Mark of Nurgle] – Battle Standard Bearer [Icon of Darkness] – Daemonic Mount – Diabolic Splendour – Enhanced Reflexes
Exalted Sorcerer [180 pts] – Hand weapon – Light armour – Mark of Chaos [Mark of Chaos Undivided] – Wizard [Level 2 Wizard] – On foot – Lore Familiar – Power Scroll – Enhanced Reflexes – Daemonology
++ Core Units [593 pts] ++
19 Chaos Warriors [372 pts] – Halberds – Heavy armour – Shields – Mark of Chaos [Mark of Chaos Undivided] – Champion [Taskmaster’s Scourge] – Standard bearer [War Banner] – Musician – Enhanced Reflexes 7 Marauder Horsemen [115 pts] – Hand weapons – Flails – Light armour – Shields – Chaotic Cult [Cult of the Carrion Crow] – Ambushers – Formation [Skirmishers] – Standard bearer – Musician
12 Chaos Marauders [106 pts] – Hand weapons – Light armour – Chaotic Cult [Cult of the Carrion Crow] – Ambushers – Formation [Skirmishers] – Standard bearer – Musician
++ Special Units [459 pts] ++
8 Chosen Chaos Knights [459 pts] – Lances – Shields – Full plate armour – Barding – Mark of Chaos [Mark of Nurgle] – Drilled – Champion [Brazen Collar] – Standard bearer [Totem of Wrath] – Musician – Enhanced Reflexes
=== Dark Elves [2009 pts] Warhammer: The Old World, Dark Elves, Open War
++ Characters [970 pts] ++
Dark Elf Dreadlord [490 pts] – Lance – Full plate armour – General – Black Dragon – Shield of Ghrond – Talisman of Protection
High Beastmaster [215 pts] – Hand weapon – Whip – Cavalry spear – Heavy armour – Manticore – Charmed Shield
10 Dark Riders [218 pts] – Hand weapons – Cavalry spears – Repeater crossbows – Light armour – Shields – Fire & Flee – Herald (champion) – Standard bearer – Musician
++ Special Units [493 pts] ++
18 Black Guard of Naggarond [334 pts] – Hand weapons – Dread halberds – Full plate armour – Drilled – Tower Master (champion) – Standard bearer [Banner of Har Ganeth] – Musician
9 Dark Elf Shades [150 pts] – Hand weapons – Additional hand weapons – Light armour – Bloodshade (champion)
=== Kingdom of Bretonnia [2000 pts] Warhammer: The Old World, Kingdom of Bretonnia, Open War
++ Characters [985 pts] ++
Lady Élisse Duchaard [225 pts] – Hand weapon – Chalice of Brionne – The Staff of the Elements – Wizard [Level 3 Wizard] – Elementalism
The Green Knight [275 pts] – The Dolorous Blade – Heavy armour – Shield – Barding
Duke [353 pts] – Hand weapon – Heavy armour – Shield – General – Bretonnian Warhorse – Cackling Blade – Potion of Strength – Virtue of Knightly Temper
Paladin [132 pts] – Hand weapon – Lance – Heavy armour – Shield – The Grail Vow – Battle Standard Bearer [Banner of Swirling Wind] – Bretonnian Warhorse
4 Mounted Knights of the Realm [137 pts] – Hand weapons – Lances – Shields – Heavy armour – Barding – First Knight (champion) – Standard bearer [Banner of Châlons] – Musician
3 Mounted Knights of the Realm [93 pts] – Hand weapons – Lances – Shields – Heavy armour – Barding – First Knight (champion) – Standard bearer – Musician
3 Mounted Knights of the Realm [93 pts] – Hand weapons – Lances – Shields – Heavy armour – Barding – First Knight (champion) – Standard bearer – Musician
++ Special Units [111 pts] ++
11 Squires [111 pts] – Hand weapons – Longbows – Fire & Flee – Scouts – Esquire (champion) – Standard bearer
++ Rare Units [400 pts] ++
8 Grail Knights [400 pts] – Hand weapons – Lances – Shields – Heavy armour – Barding – Grail Guardian (champion) [Antlers of the Great Hunt] – Standard bearer [Totem of Wrath] – Musician
We’ve updated the method of calculating the Elo ratings into our Age of Sigmar stats, this includes an attempt to reflect both the tournament strength and the faction strength.
All of the results in this article are taken from Best Coast Pairings, , Ecksen, ChampionshipHub, Milarki, Mini Headquarters, Tabletop Herald and Longshanks. They include GT (Two day events) or GT+ (6 or more rounds) only.
For patrons, you’ll be able to download and play with the database as well (which includes all the lists and stats for all the factions).
As always, if you’re struggling to read a chart, you should be able to right click and then either view or download the image.
This week’s update adds another six events, 257 tournament runs and 1,260 individual player game records to the July Battlescroll data.
That additional evidence has produced movement at both ends of the table. Some of our thoughts around last weeks data have been strengthened, while one faction in particular now looks very different.
Faction Dashboard Analysis
The Ogors have arrived
Last week, Ogor Mawtribes had a 38% Observed Win Rate. But we know that was based on only 89 games from 19 players, leaving a large amount of uncertainty around the result.
One week later, and the picture has changed, a lot. Ogors now have 194 games from 40 players and an Observed Win Rate of 47%. Their confidence interval has narrowed to 40–54%, while their Skill-Adjusted Win Rate is also 47%.
This doesn’t mean that Ogors are sudddenly perfectly balanced. The is and will remain one of the smaller in the dataset until the next Battlescroll, and a nine-percentage-point movement in one week showsy why we need to be cautious with early samples.
What it does show is that last week’s 38% was not enough to support a firm conclusion.
Their tournament conversion has improved as well. Thirteen per cent of Ogor runs have now reached four wins, with another 35% finishing on three. Their zero-or-one-win share has fallen from 48% last week to 33%.
The early disaster has become something much closer to an ordinary faction result.
Gloomspite’s decline is becoming harder to ignore
Gloomspite Gitz remain at 45% across the complete Battlescroll, but the overall figure hides a more worrying trend.
Their latest 200 games have produced only a 38% Win Rate. Which is now 13.5 percentage points below their opening 200 game sample. That’s the largest negative movement in recent form on the dashboard.
Player strength doesn’t provide much of an explanation. Gloomspite players had a 49% baseline expectation, while the Skill-Adjusted Faction Win Rate only rises to 46%.
Their GT results are similar. Only 13% of Gloomspite players have reached four wins, while 31% have ended with either zero or one.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to treat their recent decline as ordinary noise.
Three factions are gaining momentum
At the other end of the table, three factions are now showing improvement.
Disciples of Tzeentch have the largest positive change. Their latest 200 games have reached 55%, which is 6.8 percentage points above their opening sample.
But, Tzeentch also have one of the strongest player populations in the game. 35% of their players are rated at 500+ WoElo, and their individual match-ups were predicted to win 54% of their games. Once we adjust for that, their Skill-Adjusted Faction Win Rate falls to 49%.
The recent Tzeentch surge is real in that those games were won. But how much of it is faction strength and how much is the players skills?
Sylvaneth’s latest 200 games have reached 55%, an improvement of 4.8 percentage points. Their players were only expected to win 49% of their games, and their adjusted estimate remains at 53%, so the Faction does seem to have an affect on the players results.
Daughters of Khaine have also improved, with their latest sample reaching 57%, 4.5 points above their opening 200. Their stronger player population accounts for some of that performance, bringing their overall result from 55% observed to 53% adjusted.
Fyreslayers remain the faction to watch
Fyreslayers now have the highest Observed Win Rate on the dashboard at 58%.
That result still comes from a reasonably small amount of games, leaving a 51–64% confidence interval. But, even so, the player adjustment doesn’t bring the win rate down too much.
Their players had a 51% expectation to win, and their Skill-Adjusted Faction Win Rate stays at 54%. This is the highest adjusted estimate on the faction table.
This is the biggest difference between Fyreslayers and Hedonites of Slaanesh.
Hedonites have a 57% Observed Win Rate, but their players have the highest average WoElo in the game at 480.5 and were expected to win 55% of their games. Their adjusted estimate falls to 52%.
Both are winning plenty of games. But currently it seems that more of the Fyreslayers result remains after accounting for the players involved.
Cities stay strong, but their performance is steadier
Cities of Sigmar now have the largest high-performing sample: 830 games from 166 players.
Their Win Rate remains at 56%, with 28% of their players reaching at least four wins. Their last 200 games sit at 54%, only one percentage point below their opening sample, so no drop in performance.
After accounting for their skilled player population, their adjusted estimate is 54%.
Formation Analysis
Zealous Hordes continues to carry Cities
Zealous Hordes carrys on as the leading formation, with a 60% Observed Win Rate across 332 games.
Its players are strong, and their average WoElo is 480.8 and their players were expected to win 52% of their games. Even after adjusting for that, the formation stays at a 57% adjusted estimate.
Compared to the other Cities formations:
Zealous Hordes: 60% observed, 57% adjusted
Stalwart Guardians: 51% observed, 51% adjusted
Swift Reinforcements: 50% observed, 50% adjusted
The faction’s performance is not spread evenly. Zealous Hordes is doing the heavy lifting.
Its 4+ Win Rate has dropped from 31% to 29%.
Other formations worth watching
Aelementor Guardians stays near the top of the table at 60% observed across 144 games. Their adjusted estimate has fallen to 54%, meaning that perhaps that player strength is possibly behind their results.
Lords of the Clan stands out for the opposite reason. It has a 55% Observed Win Rate, but its players were only expected to win 47% of their matches. Its adjusted estimate remains at 56%.
This shows a good example of a formation performing better than we expected from the previous results of the players using it.
At the bottom, Fleshmeld Menagerie has fallen to 38% observed across 133 games. Its adjusted result improves to 45%, the formation continues to struggle.
Squigalanche is the same at 42% observed and 44% adjusted across 203 games.
Popularity Analysis
Population Matters
The population charts shows why you shouldn’t just take the raw win rates at face value.
Tzeentch have 35% of their players rated at 500 WoElo or above. Daughters of Khaine have 36%, while Cities have 26%.
At the bottom, 60% of Kharadron Overlords players are rated below 400. The same is for 56% of Skaven players and 55% of both Gloomspite Gitz and Helsmiths of Hashut players.
Strong factions may attract strong players. Experienced players may swap towards particular playstyles. Also, repeatedly playing an underperforming army may itself drag down a player’s WoElo.
The adjustment is not intended to reveal a faction’s “true” win rate. It just asks how the faction performed compared with what we would have expected from the previous performance of the players involved?
As the Ogor results show this week, that, and the sample behind it, can make a big difference.
Win Analysis
What records are players walking away with?
Hedonites still lead the table, with 29% of players reaching four or more wins. Cities follow on 28%, Daughters of Khaine on 27%, and Disciples of Tzeentch on 26%.
Soulblight Gravelords are also quietly converting well. 25% of their players reach four wins, with another 25% finishing on three.
Stormcast Eternals remain near the bottom. Only 10% of their 180 players have reached four wins, while 31% have ended with either none or one.
The most important change, is Ogor Mawtribes. Last week, none of their players had reached four wins. That figure has now gone up to 13%,
Accounting for Player Strength
Woehammer Database
To download out Age of Sigmar stats database, click on the button below.
For those of you who are counted among our legendary Patreons, you can view the full stats and download the stats database.
This database is included in an additional article which is Patreon only and posted on the same day. These Patreon posts also include additional stats which aren’t available in the standard stats article, such as Faction v Faction stats.
We’ve updated the method of calculating the Elo ratings into our Age of Sigmar stats, this includes an attempt to reflect both the tournament strength and the faction strength.
All of the results in this article are taken from Best Coast Pairings, , Ecksen, ChampionshipHub, Milarki, Mini Headquarters, Tabletop Herald and Longshanks. They include GT (Two day events) or GT+ (6 or more rounds) only.
For patrons, you’ll be able to download and play with the database as well (which includes all the lists and stats for all the factions).
As always, if you’re struggling to read a chart, you should be able to right click and then either view or download the image.
There are a few changes this week, so I should probably explain myself first!
Firstly, we no longer have the traditional win-rate chart. This has been replaced by the new Faction Meta Dashboard.
The reason is to move away from treating win rates as the sacred word when it comes to balance. I’ve been saying for a while now that win rates only scrape the surface. They’re useful, but we need to dig deeper to understand how those figures are being produced.
With that in mind, the Dashboard now shows the number of players and games behind each faction’s win rate, which we’re now calling the Observed Win Rate. Next to that, you’ll see the percentage of GT runs which resulted in four or more wins across the first five rounds of events.
On either side of the Observed Win Rate are two columns marked Lower and Upper. These represent the 95% confidence interval around that result. In simple terms, they’re the range within which we think the faction’s underlying win rate is likely to sit. Factions with fewer recorded games will have a much wider range, while those with hundreds of games will give us more confidence.
Recent Form
You’ll also see a new Recent Form section. We’re comparing a faction’s most recent 200 games with its opening 200 games of the current Battlescroll. To avoid overlapping samples, we only make this comparison once a faction has recorded more than 400 games.
This gives us another way of looking at the meta. Rather than asking “How has this faction performed across the whole Battlescroll?”, we can ask “Is it still performing that way now?”
That’s already producing some interesting results, which we’ll come to later.
Skill-Adjusted Win Rates
Last, we come to probably the most interesting part of the Dashboard, for me at least. The Skill-Adjusted Analysis attempts to separate faction performance from the skill and experience of the players using it.
Using WoElo, we can estimate how likely each player was to win each individual game based solely on the WoElo of themselves and their opponent. At this stage, we’re deliberately ignoring which factions either player brought.
Take Hedonites of Slaanesh as an example. Their players have an average WoElo of 480.9, and based on the individual match-ups those players encountered during this battlescroll, we would have expected them to win approximately 55% of their games even before looking at anything to do with Factions, Formations or lists.
Their Observed Win Rate was 58%. Once we account for that player-strength advantage, our current Skill-Adjusted Faction Win Rate estimate is 52%.
That doesn’t mean Hedonites really have a 52% win rate. The 58% is what actually happened. Instead, the adjusted figure is our attempt to answer a slightly different:
How much of that performance comes from the faction, rather than the players using it?
Battle Formations
We’ve also introduced a dedicated Battle Formation Meta Table.
This works in the same way as the Faction Dashboard, showing the number of players and games recorded for each formation, its usage within the faction, 4+ win finishes, Observed Win Rate and the 95% confidence interval around that result.
We then apply the same player-skill analysis to produce a Skill-Adjusted Formation Win Rate.
I think this is important because a faction sitting comfortably at 50% doesn’t mean every way of building that army is balanced. One formation might be outperforming while another struggles, with the two averaging out into what could be seen as a healthy faction result.
The Charts
We’ve retained our two player population charts, showing the number and percentage of players within each WoElo bracket. These provide some useful context for the Dashboard by showing just how differently the player populations of each faction are distributed.
We’ve also kept the Fabien Chart, showing what percentage of players finished their GT runs with 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4+ wins. Averages are useful, but sometimes it’s much more informative to see what actually happened to the people who took an army to an event.
Finally, we have one new chart, Observed vs Skill-Adjusted Faction Win Rate. Blue represents the Observed Win Rate and orange represents our estimate after taking into account player WoElo.
The line between them is where some of the interesting stories in the data live. If a faction moves substantially down after adjustment, we have evidence that a strong player population may be helping its results. If it moves upwards, its players may actually be underperforming.
And with all that explanation out of the way, we can finally get onto what the numbers are actually telling us this week…
Faction Dashboard Analysis
With the boring explanations out of the way, let’s get into the good stuff.
Hedonites of Slaanesh
Hedonites are sitting pretty with 58%, but there’s more being that. Hedonites have the highest Observed Win Rate in the game, and that 58% comes out of 350 games. That would be where most people stop, they’re three percentage points above the traditional 45-55% window, and 30% of their completed GT runs have resulted in four or more wins, which is also the highest in our data.
But Hedonites players also have an average WoElo of 480.9, the highest of any faction. Looking at the individual opponents they’ve faced, we’d have expected these players to win around 55% of their games based on their ratings alone. Their skill-adjusted estimate falls from 58% to 52% which is the largest downward adjustment on the table.
It doesn’t mean Hedonites are a 52% faction, or that there’s nothin to worry about. But what it tells us is that Hedonites raw results are going with a very strong player population.
Fyreslayers
Fyreslayers are 57% from 223 games. But unlike Hedonites, adjusting for the player strength doesn’t make that performance disappear.
Fyreslayers players have averaged out at 448.2 WoElo, with their match-ups giving them a player-skill baseline of roughly 51%, this has meant their skill-adjusted win rate remains at around 54%.
So we have two factions with similar headline results:
Hedonites: 58% falling to 52% adjusted Fyreslayers: 57% falling to 54% adjusted
It would arguably mean that the Fyreslayers are the more interesting faction to watch. But, Fyreslayers only have 223 games recorded which means the confidence interval is quite wide at between 51-64%.
They’re also having 21% of their players achieve 4+ wins compared to Hedonites 30%.
Cities of Sigmar
Cities have 720 games from 145 players on record, with an Observed Win Rate of 56%. Their confidence interval is narrower at 53-60%, and 29% of their players reach four or more wins.
Cities opening 200 games had an Observed Win Rate of 58% which has fallen to 54% across the most recent 200 games.
Their WoElo is good, averaging at 454.1, but even taking that into account their skill-adjusted win rate is still 55%. But there’s even more behind this when we get to the Formation dashboard.
Daughters of Khaine
Their overall Observed Win Rate is 56%, but their most recent 200 games have reached 58%, up 4.8 percentage points compared with their opening 200.
Their average WoElo is a tough 465.8 and their expected player performance was around 52%, which brings their adjusted down to 53%.
Gloomspite Gitz
At the other end of the table we have the Gitz. They’ve won 45% of their 519 games this battlescroll, and their latest 200 games is sitting at just 38%. Unlike some of the other factions, player strength doesn’t seem to explain this one. Gitz players have an average WoElo of 404.0 and a player-skill baseline of 49%. Our adjusted win rate only goes up to 47%.
Something has changed recently, it could be anything between the players, builds, match-ups or simply the wider meta adapting to Gitz.
Ogor Mawtribes
The new Ogor Mawtribes have been getting a lot of attention recently and have an awful lookin 38% Observed Win Rate. But that is only based on 89 games across 19 players, Their confidence interval is a massive 28-48%, and their skill-adjusted estimates climbs to 44%.
This does suggest the Ogors performance could be partly down to the skill and experience of the players using faction. But we don’t have enough data yet.
Formation Analysis
Lumineth Realm-lords
Aelementor Guardians are leading the way. Sitting with a whopping 61% Observed Win Rate across 124 games and 35% of their players achieving four wins or more.
Player strength accounts for some of that with Aelementor players having an average WoElo of 474.9 with a player baseline of 52%. But even taking this into account, the formation still has an adjusted win rate of 55%.
Cities of Sigmar
Cities’ Zealous Hordes are more of a concern. With 284 games from 59 players. It has a 60% Observed Win Rate and a 31% 4+ success rate. Their average WoElo is 473.6 and after taking in the player skill, we would still expect Zealous Hordes to hit around 57%. Compare that to the other formations:
Formation
Observed Win Rate
Adjusted Win Rate
Zealous Hordes
60%
57%
Stalwart Guardians
53%
51%
Swift Reinforcements
48%
50%
Zealous Hordes seems to be doing the heavy lifting in the Cities Observed Win Rate.
Hedonites of Slaanesh
With Hedonites, Depraved Carnival are used in 75% of their games. They have 58% across 261 games, which is pretty much the same as the Hedonites overall figures.
But again, their player base is strong at 483.2, and their players were expected to win 54% of the time regardless of faction. Their estimated win rate falls to 53%.
Sylvaneth
Sylvaneth have two Formations that are giving us some interest. The Faction overall has 53%, but their Formation Lords of the Clan has 56% over its 241 games and an adjusted win rate of 56%. Their players have a modest WoElo of 413.9 and an expected win rate regardless of Factions at 47%. Meanwhile Glade Defenders sits at 51% observed and 51% adjusted across 319 games.
Interesting because Lords of the Clan isn’t producing good results because of a high skill player base. Its players are outperforming what we’d expect from their ratings.
Blades of Khorne
Khorne aren’t particularly alarming at 50% Observed and 53% Adjusted. But Murderhost is currently at 52% Observed and 54% Adjusted, while Khornate Legion sits at 51% and 52%. Northing scary there.
But what’s interesting is that both improve after player adjustment. Murderhost players have a baseline expectation of only 46% yet won 52% of their games.
Kharadron Overlords
The Endrineers Guild Expeditionary Force makes a jump from 44% observed to 50% adjusted. Their average WoElo is just 351.6 which is incredibly low.
I’m not claiming they secretly balanced, but its difficult to look at the 44% without looking at who’s piloting the army in those games.
Popularity Analysis
Disciples of Tzeentch have one of the strongest populations in the game, around 34% of their players are rated 500+ WoElo, including 6% above 700. Daughters of Khaine aren’t far behind, with 38% at 500+.
That helps put some of their results into context. Both factions are performing well, but they’re also attracting considerably stronger-than-average players.
At the opposite end sit factions such as Kharadron Overlords, where around 60% of players are below 400 WoElo, and only around 9% are currently above 500.
Skaven and Gloomspite also have particularly large sub-400 populations at 56% apiece.
This doesn’t tell us why. It could be that those factions attract less experienced players, that experienced players have moved away from them, or as was raised in our Discord this week, that repeatedly playing a struggling army may itself suppress a player’s WoElo.
That’s something we’re going to look at, and not pretend we’ve already got the answer.
Win Analysis
This remains one of my favourite charts because it translates abstract win rates into something much more tangible. If I take this faction to a GT, what sorts of records are people actually coming home with?
At the top, 30% of Hedonites runs reach four or more wins, followed closely by Cities at 29% and Daughters of Khaine at 27%.
But the rest matters too. For Hedonites, another 32% finish on three wins. That means roughly six in ten Hedonites GT runs are currently finishing with at least three wins from the five rounds we’re measuring. Compare that with Stormcast Eternals. Only 10% reach four wins, while 31% finish 3-2, 27% finish 2-3, 19% manage one win and 12% go winless.
And then there are Ogors. None of the 19 recorded Ogor players have yet reached four wins, while 48% finished with either zero or one win. The sample is tiny, as we’ve already discussed, but that’s still rather grim.
Accounting for Player Strength
This helps us see more clearly what I’ve been talking about this week. When we account for players strength some factions barely move at all while others move massively.
Hedonites fall from 58% to 52%, and Daughters from 56% to 53%. At the opposite end we can see that Kharadron rise 46% to 50% and Ogors go from 38% to 44%.
This is not intended to show any “real” win rate. WoElo and faction performance aren’t independent. A player repeatedly winning with a strong army will increase their WoElo, and someone sticking with an underperforming faction could see theirs fall. But we’ll look into refining this as we get more data.
Think of this as answering: “How did this faction perform compared with what we’d have expected from the previous performance of the players involved?”
Woehammer Database
To download out Age of Sigmar stats database, click on the button below.
For those of you who are counted among our legendary Patreons, you can view the full stats and download the stats database.
This database is included in an additional article which is Patreon only and posted on the same day. These Patreon posts also include additional stats which aren’t available in the standard stats article, such as Faction v Faction stats.
We’ve updated the method of calculating the Elo ratings into our Age of Sigmar stats, this includes an attempt to reflect both the tournament strength and the faction strength.
All of the results in this article are taken from Best Coast Pairings, , Ecksen, ChampionshipHub, Milarki, Mini Headquarters, Tabletop Herald and Longshanks. They include GT (Two day events) or GT+ (6 or more rounds) only.
For patrons, you’ll be able to download and play with the database as well (which includes all the lists and stats for all the factions).
As always, if you’re struggling to read a chart, you should be able to right click and then either view or download the image.
Tournaments Included (Using December Battlescroll)
I’ve added in a colour code to show the rough age of the rules the faction is using.
As always, these are global stats from various sources around the internet.
Estimated Win Rates if the Player Skill Levels were Equal
What I’m trying to do here is work out what the win rates would be if the skill levels of all the players were the same (Yes, I realise this is nearly impossible to calculate – But I’m playing around here).
How it works is by calculating the average Elo of all the players that have had matches since the July battlescroll dropped. This worked out as 411.1. I then calculated how much difference there was between a factions average Elo shown in our original win rate graph to this overall average. The difference between these two figures was then turned into a percentage difference over/under the 411.1 elo. I then increased or decreased their win rate by this percentage (But this isn’t as simple as deducting or adding the percentage different to the win rate – you have to work out for instance what 4% may be of say 53% and then apply that. For Example – 10% of 40% is 4%)
Win Rates by Release Date
This chart shows the win rates for all the battletomes released within certain periods of time (every 6 months since 4th edition release).
This should show whether Battletomes are generally stronger the later they are released into the edition. As we can see they all fall within the 45-55% win area, though the battletomes released in the last 6 months are a little stronger than the other cohorts.
Battle Formation Win Rates
This chart shows the win rates for Battle Formations that have seen 100 games or more at GT events.
Faction Popularity (Broken Down by Player Elo Rating)
This is perhaps the most interesting chart to me personally. Here you can see the spread of the player skill levels for each faction according to our Elo rating system (updated each week in line with the Age of Sigmar stats).
The dark blue shows the really elite players of 700+ Elo. Interestingly, they don’t seem to give a damn about which faction is performing well in the meta and rely on their own skill (as they should!). Neither to 600-699 rated players. Where we start to see the swell in players possibly chasing the factions with more favourable rules is in players rated less than 600 Elo.
To make it a bit easier to see the effect of higher skilled players, I’ve added the below chart this week which breaks down each factions player base as a percentage.
Elite and Rookie Players by Faction
The blue section shows the percentage of a factions players which have an Elo rating of 500 or greater. While the Orange shows the number of new players to the faction where they have yet to attend a tournament (based on our database history).
The Fabien Chart
Fabien Barbusse is a top player in the AoS scene and a member of the Woehammer Discord who is one of many who points out any mistakes in the charts before we publish them. He stated he felt the most valuable chart would be a version of the one above, which shows the % of 4+ win results in a 5 game event compared to the other results.
% of Players with a Positive GT Result
Ideally you would want 50% of the players having a positive results for a truly balanced game system.
Consecutive Wins
This chart shows firstly the % of players with a negative result from 5 games at GT’s or GT+ in purple for each faction.
Dark blue shows the percentage of players who achieved 5 wins from 5 in the first five rounds of a GT or GT+.
Orange shows the players who achieved four wins from the first four rounds of a GT or GT+ but were unable to achieve the full house and lost their round 5 match.
Green shows the players who achieved three wins from three wins but were unable to win in their fourth round match.
Light blue shows all other players aside from those shown in the first three categories, who were able to achieve a positive result at a GT or GT+ i.e. 3 or more wins.
Battleplan Win Rates
This one could be useful for TO’s who are looking to run tournaments in the near future. If you’re hoping to curtail a few of the higher powered factions, you could perhaps look to use battleplans where those factions aren’t as dominant.
PlasticCraic mentioned the popularity of Battleplans earlier this week on his discord. So thought I’d include this.
Past Battlescroll Win Rates
Woehammer Database
To download out Age of Sigmar stats database, click on the button below.
For those of you who are counted among our legendary Patreons, you can view the full stats and download the stats database.
This database is included in an additional article which is Patreon only and posted on the same day. These Patreon posts also include additional stats which aren’t available in the standard stats article, such as Faction v Faction stats.
Fallout gets a new edition, Konflikt ’47 gets a rules update, Conquest overhauls the Hundred Kingdoms. There’s plenty happening beyond the Games Workshop bubble.
Welcome to This Week in Wargaming, an attempt to sort through the last seven days of releases, rules updates and announcements and pick out the things actually worth knowing about.
There’s a lot of wargaming news and nobody should have to spend their Friday evening reading all of it. Except apparently, me.
Fallout: Wasteland Warfare gets a new edition
One of the biggest stories of the week comes from Modiphius, where pre-orders have opened for the new edition of Fallout: Wasteland Warfare.
There are two routes into the new game.
Into the Wasteland is the £60 solo starter set, while the Warbands Starter Set costs £120 and contains Survivors and Super Mutants for players wanting to fight against one another.
Both are currently expected to ship in November 2026.
The new edition also appears to lean heavily into something Fallout is particularly well suited to: campaigns.
Players can create their own survivor, gather a warband and head out into the Wasteland, with the results of encounters affecting their hero and followers as the campaign progresses.
Modiphius has even taken advantage of the game’s increased focus on solo play to expand mechanics such as stealth, allowing players to sneak past enemies rather than resolving every encounter by repeatedly shooting things in the face.
Although presumably repeatedly shooting things in the face remains an option.
That’s particularly interesting because Konflikt ’47 (Affiliate link) continues to receive development rather than simply new miniature releases.
Earlier this year Warlord introduced new Special Platoons, including the British Commonwealth Automated Platoon, bringing new units alongside changes to existing ones.
For a game built around alternative-history Second World War forces, the ability to keep introducing increasingly strange battlefield technology gives Warlord rather more room to play than historical Bolt Action.
Para Bellum has released what it describes as a full rework of the Hundred Kingdoms.
The update introduces new regiments, synergies, items and Supremacy Abilities, with the updated army list now available through Para Bellum’s rules downloads.
First Blood players have received something substantial too. The Might of the Orders is the game’s first Warband of Legend, allowing players to field an entirely Orders-themed warband with its own composition options, upgrades and Army Special Rules.
With the Order of the Sword and Lazarite Warriors now available, that means an entire force can be built around the Orders.
Para Bellum makes a push for First Blood
There’s another interesting story sitting underneath the Hundred Kingdoms changes.
August is effectively First Blood month for Para Bellum. The company is currently providing free access to its rules PDFs for the rest of August as part of the new edition’s launch.
From September, Para Bellum says unlimited access to the rules and app will instead be available using licence codes included in its products.
There are also new First Blood Reinforcement Sets coming for the factions on 28 August. This looks like an attempt to establish First Blood as a substantial game in its own right rather than merely Conquest, but smaller.
That’s potentially useful for players attracted to the Conquest universe and miniatures who aren’t ready to buy another mass-battle army. Because some of us already have enough of those. Apparently.
A new skirmish game lands in the Woehammer inbox
Not everything interesting comes from one of the established manufacturers.
This week Woehammer was contacted by Chris Mooney of Wargame Geeks Ltd about Thrackdown, a new miniature-agnostic skirmish game currently in open alpha.
The rules are free and, according to Chris, will remain free.
There’s already an online Warband Builder, while being miniature-agnostic means players can use models they already own rather than buying into another proprietary range.
Free doesn’t necessarily mean good, of course, so we’re going to take a proper look before deciding what we think.
The French Revolution arrives in hard plastic
Historical gamers get something rather nice this week from Perry Miniatures.
The new Revolutionary French Infantry 1789–1802 set has arrived in 28mm hard plastic.
It’s a particularly flexible box, capable of representing Line Infantry, National Guard, Volunteers, Conscripts, Grenadiers and Light Infantry.
There are 45 figures in the box, with enough arms to produce a complete 36-man unit while leaving another nine figures to form the beginnings of another.
The set is £28 direct from Perry Miniatures. Which works out at roughly 62p per miniature. Games Workshop players may wish to sit down for a moment.
Rifleman Harris joins Sharpe’s Rifles
Wargames Atlantic has meanwhile released Rifleman Harris 1809, the third miniature in its officially licensed Sharpe’s Rifles range.
The hard-plastic set contains both a 54mm display version of Harris and a 28mm gaming miniature, with the latter having alternative head and arm options.
Wargames Atlantic describes him as The Scholar of the 95th.
We’re not going to pretend this represents a seismic change in the wargaming industry. It’s Rifleman Harris. That’s enough.
“I’ll trade you a Voltaire and a filthy book by the Marquis de Sade for yours by Sir Augustus, sir” – Rifleman Harris (Sharpe’s Havoc)
Mantic fights for Samarik
Mantic’s Siege of Samarik community campaign is also reaching an important point this weekend.
Its Friday newsletter describes this as a crucial weekend in determining whether Samarik holds or falls, while Mantic’s Kings of War Slow Grow is also receiving its community send-off.
Mantic originally announced that the Siege of Samarik campaign would begin in August as part of its summer Kings of War programme.
Community campaigns aren’t necessarily headline news, but they’re exactly the sort of thing we’d like to highlight occasionally. Anything that encourages people to actually play games with the armies they’ve spent six months painting is probably worth supporting.
It’s the sort of release that sounds completely unnecessary until you decide to build a village for a narrative campaign and suddenly realise every resident appears to be carrying a halberd.
They’re board games rather than wargames, so we’re not giving them acres of space here, but Discworld entering the Modiphius tabletop catalogue is enough to grab a mention.
What about Warhammer?
Yes, Games Workshop has been busy. It’s always busy.
Rules updates, new editions, significant army releases and genuinely interesting developments from Age of Sigmar, Warhammer 40,000, The Old World, Horus Heresy and the specialist games will absolutely appear here.
We’re just not going to include something because Games Workshop published an article about it. There are plenty of places to get your daily Warhammer fix already.
The reason for this column is to show you everything else that’s happening.
That’s it for this week
For us, Fallout: Wasteland Warfare’s new edition, the Konflikt ’47 rules update and the Hundred Kingdoms rework for Conquest are the three stories worth paying particular attention to.
There is an loads happening in miniature wargaming outside Games Workshop.
See you next Saturday.
And if you’re a designer, manufacturer or publisher doing something interesting, feel free to get in touch. Preferably before we go to bed next Friday.
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